Listen. Last week we were looking at the question: how do we know whether we are regenerate? Whether we are born again? Now this is the language of Christians, and I know that today there are a number among us who are not Christians. And so, to put this question for the non-Christian, it means: how do you know whether you are truly a Christian or not? But in another way, we were asking for a definition of what is a Christian according to the Bible. Now you may know what a Christian is according to some of your Christian acquaintances, or according to the definition of some churches perhaps. But we wanted to ask the question: what is a Christian according to the Bible?
And we saw that a regenerate person — "regenerate" simply means to be born again — is one who has become a new person, who has finished with the old life. And this, in the Bible's language, is spoken of as our having been crucified with Christ. Christ died on the cross, and we identified with him in his death, so that we have finished with the old way of life. Because you cannot become a new person — it is not difficult to understand this logically — you cannot enter into a new kind of life without having first finished with the old kind of life. You cannot be both old and new at the same time. That would be a logical contradiction. You are either new or old. And the Bible says that in order to become new, you are to finish with the old.
How to finish with the old? Well, you don't commit suicide. Your old life is put away, put to death with Christ on the cross. That is, it is a work that God does. He takes your old life — which may at this point be hard for you to understand — but he takes your old life and puts it away with Christ on the cross. And he gives you a new, a brand-new kind of life. Very exciting.
You see, the Christian life is better understood by being experienced than by being explained. Spiritual things are very hard to understand when people explain them to you. They are very easy to understand when you experience them. As I often like to share, when I first became a Christian and I read in the Bible so many things, I had great difficulty in understanding them. And when people tried to explain them to me, sometimes I got even more confused — that is assuming that he knew what he was talking about. Sometimes that is also the problem: he may not know what he is talking about, at least not too well. So by the time he tries to explain the whole thing to you, you are even more confused.
I read in the Bible in the Old Testament, the Lord spoke to the prophets and the prophet said, "Thus says the Lord." And I kept scratching my head and saying, "How does he know the Lord said it? How did the Lord speak to him? By what technique could he have this privilege of listening to God?" The prophets were able to communicate with God, and I longed for this privilege. How do I communicate with God? How can the prophet be so sure of what God wants him to say? And what is more, as you look at the prophecies — the Bible is full of prophecies in the Old Testament. You have the five major prophets, you have the twelve minor prophets. At least you find seventeen prophetic books out of thirty-nine books in the Old Testament. That is nearly half the books are prophetic. And the details of the prophecy are remarkable in their precision. How was the prophet so certain that God had said these things?
Now if somebody said, "Well, you see, it works like this..." And then? Then how? You don't understand what it means. And one day when the Lord spoke to me, then I knew. The first time that he spoke to me — as I said several times to various of you — I was a very young Christian and I was waiting on the Lord's leading to know what to do. I had three times applied to leave China. I was living in Shanghai, China, at the time. I'm from Shanghai, as you may know. Three times, and twice already I had applied to leave China. I was not permitted to leave.
So I knelt down before the Lord in my room, on the concrete floor there, and I said, "Lord, what do you want me to do? They will not let me go. I have no more funds. I am still as a matchstick." Undernourished, weak. Although once I had been a strong sportsman, long-term hunger and starvation had reduced me to a skeleton by that time. And I said, "Lord, I'm willing to stay in China. Do you want me to stay? But what do you want me to do in China? I'm willing to do whatever you want me to do." And then suddenly, as I knelt there, the voice of the Lord spoke to me. A voice that came from behind me, which said in very clear words: "I will take you out of this country."
The voice so startled me that I turned around to see who was speaking to me. And there was nobody there. And I could only wonder — the Lord has spoken to me! Who else could speak to me? Now that simple little experience — I mean little, it was not a long episode — that experience of hearing God speaking to me immediately made very clear to me — the whole Old Testament opened up to me at once. Now I understood how God spoke to the prophets. Now I understood. Up to that point, it all seemed so mysterious: "God spoke to the prophets." Now it was clear. That's what I mean: spiritual things are understood by being experienced.
I just used the word "regeneration." Mysterious word. Regeneration. What is that? Well, once you are regenerated, it's very easy to understand. Once you experience what it is that God's power comes into your life and regenerates you — that is, makes you new all over again, causes you to be born again — immediately you understand what regeneration means. You do not understand it by looking the word up in a dictionary, because it will just tell you it means "to be born again." That doesn't tell you anything, because you still don't know what "born again" means. But once you have that spiritual experience, you know exactly what a person is talking about when he uses that word.
So today, when I am trying to talk about the inner spiritual dynamics of a Christian life, like every preacher knows when he tries to go into deeper things, he has got a problem. Because I am challenging you to enter into an experience that you may not have had. So the message can only serve as a challenge. And no amount of explaining to you will make the matter such that you can understand it perfectly. All I can do is say: if you walk in this way, according to the principles that I will explain to you, you will arrive at the experience that I am talking about.
I have to make another cautionary statement. I am not wanting to emphasize experience for its own sake. That in itself would also be dangerous. I am emphasizing our relationship with God, not just an experience for its own sake. You see, there are many people who want to pursue an experience for its own sake. They don't really want God. They only want God in order to get a particular experience, and when they have that experience they don't need God anymore. That is what I mean by the danger. We cannot use God.
For example, we are very familiar with this. There are many people who all year they never pray. But the exams are coming up. Ah! And suddenly they become religious. You never see them in church. But when the exam comes, whoop! All the students are in church. "No! I thought it is exam time. What are you doing in church?" "I never see you." "I thought at exam time I would have even less opportunity to see you." "No! No! It is exam time. It is the time to go to church." Why? Because God is the ace. "I've got to pass this exam. If I don't pass this exam, I have no face to see my friends, my parents. They are going to shout at me. I'll have to repeat the exam. I can't go on. And if I don't get good marks, I can't go on to this or that." So, suddenly everybody gets religious. The Chinese would say: "Last-minute religion." You see, you wanted to make use of God.
And then of course you pray and pray and you even become very religious at that time, and you fail the exam. "Ah! God doesn't work." I will say that again: God will not work for you. You work for God, not God for you. You've got things the wrong way around. If you pass the exam, it is a misfortune for you, because you will think that you can make use of God the next year the same way and the year after that the same way. I hope very much for your own sake that if you do things like that and you try to make use of God, that you will fail the exam.
Man has tried to make use of God, and as I shall show you, that's the whole problem with Christians today as well. Let's be frank about it. There are lots and lots of people sitting in the church today who are just there to make use of God. They've got emotional problems. They've got anxieties. They've got stress problems. They've got all kinds of problems, and they want to make use of God to solve the problems. Now up to a point God might tolerate that — up to a point — provided that you don't stop there, and you realize that in thanksgiving you need to let God make use of you.
Now, this is the whole secret of the spiritual dynamics: the willingness to let God use us. Two kinds of people, then. The kind who want to make use of God, and the other kind who want God to use them. I wonder which category you belong to. Now if you are a Christian because you want to use God, you are not a Christian in the Bible sense of the word — at least not yet — until a radical change takes place, and you say, "Lord, I want to have the privilege that you use me." That is what we were talking about last Sunday. The man of God is the man who wants the privilege to be used by God. He doesn't want to use God. He wants to be used by him.
Now everybody in this room belongs to one of these two categories. There is no third option. There is no third alternative. And I wonder, in all honesty, which of these two you are. Now there are shades of all sorts. Some people are coming to the stage where they are willing to say, "Let God use me a bit, provided that I can also use God a bit." And they are willing to do business with God. "Okay, so I use you a bit and you use me a bit." This is business partnership. In Chinese you say, "I give you some presents, you give me some presents." And you negotiate it this way. But with God, it doesn't work. That is why there are so few men of God. There are so few people who experience the reality of the spiritual life. Go to a church and find out how many people can share with you that God is real for them. How many can tell you, "God is real. I experience him every day." You won't be surprised how few people you can find. Because the people who try to make use of God are forever denied the privilege of knowing him in an intimate way.
Today my subject really can be summed up in the term "friendship with God." How many of you who have come back from Canada recently know that our camp theme — for those of you who don't know, our church is in Canada; there are two churches in Canada — and the camp theme this summer, two months ago in July, was "Friendship with God." I fear, though, that we didn't get very deep into the subject. And that's why I might say, by way of afterthought, I would like in this message to take the subject a little deeper. You see, we invited guest speakers to come in. On principle, I don't preach in our own church summer camps. And the result is that different speakers are not too sure what the other person said, and they all tend to maybe not be able to go very deep as a result. And we are still left with the question: how do I become a friend of God?
Now, last week I stressed the fact that it is Christ who lives in us. When you become a Christian, the choice is between yourself and Christ. Now if yourself is at the center of your life — which has been the case as a non-Christian — when you are a non-Christian, you are the center of your life. When you ask the person what he believes, he says he believes in himself. An eminently suitable object of faith, I would have to say. But they can't find a better one, so they just believe in themselves. Now what does it mean to believe in oneself? Self is at the center of your life. And they can even say it with pride: "I believe in myself." Now this means that if self is at the center of your life, you then are, on principle, the kind of person who wants to make use of God.
Can you call that friendship? If you have a friend whose only interest in being your friend is to make use of you, would you call that friendship? Would you regard that person as a friend? What kind of a friend is this? I just read in the newspaper yesterday, or the day before, in the Straits Times, about a boyfriend and girlfriend. The girlfriend trusted the boyfriend even with her bank card. Big mistake. Big mistake. Because a few days later she found that her boyfriend had withdrawn, what is it, $2,500, $600 from her bank account. And she realized the main interest of this so-called friend was in her bank account. You call that friendship?
Now let me ask you this question. Would God call you a friend if all you want is to have him help you pass your exams? To keep you in good health? To make sure that you don't have too many car accidents? And if you do have a car accident, hopefully you won't get killed? That when you go in the airplane, the plane won't crash? And that every day he will be a kind of insurance to you? You call that friendship? You think that God is looking at you and saying, "What a wonderful friend I have! This wonderful friend trusts me for passing exams and keeping him safe and giving him money and comforting him"? Would you like a friend like that? It's difficult to understand, isn't it? What's difficult about that?
What would you regard as a friend? Obviously you would regard as a friend, as the common English saying goes, "A friend in need is a friend indeed." When you are in need and your friend sticks with you, then you know that is really a friend. Now in this generation — in this generation in which the whole world stands basically in utter selfishness and rebellion against God because of its selfishness — in a sense, God needs someone who will prove their faithfulness to him in this generation. And we are given a marvelous opportunity to be his friends. I find it a pity that so many of us will miss this opportunity. Because in eternity, he won't need us again to stand for him in the darkness of this generation.
Look at the world today. Can you find a friend of God? Every man for himself. That is the law of this world. The Bible speaks about the world. The principle of this world is every man for himself. You look after your interests; I look after mine. That is the philosophy of the world. "You have a philosophy in the world in which I look after your interests and you look after mine"? Only up to a point, by contract maybe, but not as a principle of life. And with proper safeguards. We don't trust each other that much. But in this generation, God has few friends. Very, very few friends. And we are given a chance — a chance which will never come again. And I said, in eternity, God won't need that of us anymore, to prove that we are his friends.
But you see, it is contrary to our nature. And this is where the problem begins. This is the inner spiritual dynamics, the reality of the fact. We have been brought up to look after our own interests. We fight for our own interests. Our rights. We have lawyers who do that for us. And if we don't know how to fight for our rights, we pay the lawyers to defend us, to fight for our rights — even when we are wrong, and we know we are wrong, we will still get the lawyer to do his best to beat down the opposition, so that right or wrong, our interests will not be harmed. This is the kind of world we live in. And we are brought up with this mentality. Very hard to change.
I look in the Bible, and I find — as we saw also at our summer camp — that in the whole Bible, in the Old Testament at least, only two people are specifically called the friends of God. Now last Sunday we saw how rare is the man of God. How much rarer is the friend of God! How much rarer is the friend of God. Only two people. Those two people are Moses, mentioned in Exodus chapter 33, verse 11: "And God spoke with Moses as friend with friend." And the other person is Abraham, who is mentioned three times in the Bible as the friend of God. One of these is in Isaiah 41, verse 8: "Friend of God." All the privileges — the privilege to be a friend of God!
But again I say, why are there so few? Basically because, you see, as I said last time, man has flesh and he has spirit. You see that you have a body, flesh, and we also have a spirit. But in most people the spirit is almost incapable of functioning. It can't work. It is completely dominated by the flesh. And the principle of the flesh is self-interest. That is the functional principle: self-interest. Now, these two things — the Spirit of God, the spirit, and the flesh — are constantly in conflict, precisely because they work on opposite principles. The flesh is governed by the will of man, self-interest. And the spirit is governed by the will of God, otherward interest. And the spirit is governed by the will of God.
Let me read to you a passage in John chapter 1, verse 13, so that I am not talking about myself, but from the Word of God. We talk about regeneration. You notice I am dealing with basics. I am not dealing with very deep spiritual things, by the way. If you think I am saying something very deep, I want to keep reminding you, I am trying to talk at a very basic level. I am not speaking primarily to theologians; I am speaking to Christians at a basic level. Verse 12, John 1:12: "But to all who received him" — that is, who received Jesus — "who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God." Now verse 13: "Who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." In this verse, you are born either of the flesh, or you are born of God. And if you look at it, you will see the word "will" is the crucial word here. The will of the flesh, or the will of God.
Now the crucial point here then is that either you are governed in your thinking and in your way of life by the will of your flesh, which is absolute self-interest, or you are governed by the will of God, which is absolute outward interest, self-giving interest. Can you be a friend with a person whose mentality and character is totally different from yours? Not for long you can't, because you will be in conflict with him or with her before very long. God's character is totally different from man's. God's will is the reverse of man's.
Now you know why a Christian knows God is so real? Because he encounters the reality of the will of God. Do you understand what I mean? Go back to simple logic. If God does not exist, it follows logically that there is no such thing as the will of God. Now I am speaking to non-Christians at a very basic level too. If there is no such thing as the will of God, then what are we talking about when we talk about the will of God? Because if there is no God, there is no will of God. If there is no will of God, then how can we speak about something existing which does not exist?
If there is no will of God, then what is called the will of God must be no more than a sublimated or a camouflaged form of the will of man, which is not very easy to understand. That means to say, we say something is the will of God which is in fact not the will of God; it is simply another form of the will of man. That would have to be the humanistic explanation. In a way it is a pity that very few people study basic philosophy today. They have trouble coping with basic reasoning. In basic reasoning, this is very easy to understand. If there is no God, then there is no will of God. And if there is no will of God, then we have to say: what is this thing called the will of God? Then we have to say, it is simply a sublimated form of the will of man.
So far so good in the reasoning, until we run into a big trouble. The big trouble is this: that as a matter of fact and as a matter of experience, the will of God is not a sublimated form or an altered form or a decorated form or an improved form of the will of man. Because it is exactly the reverse of the will of man. That is the amazing thing about it. The will of God is always exactly the opposite of the will of man. It is always contrary to the will of man. It stands in absolute opposition to the will of man. That is why man cannot produce the will of God: because it is exactly the reverse of his own will. Can you follow that? Can you follow the reasoning? Very simple. This is a matter of experience. When I walk with God...
# Friendship with God: Doing His Will (Part 2) - The Absolute Commitment to His Will
...the will of man. That is the remarkable thing. Now, in this conflict of wills, we have to make a choice. You either do your own will, or you do God's will. Now, if you want to be a friend of God, you will soon realize there's no way to be his friend as long as you do your own will. To be his friend, you have to completely surrender your self-centered will and live in total submission to his will. Does that sound possible as a human achievement? If you say yes, let me tell you, you have not understood what you are talking about. The will of God cannot be accomplished by the will of man. That is why God is real to every person who has even tried to walk with God.
Now, I have studied philosophy in my university days, and I know the problems of philosophy here. The problem is that to the mind of man, there is no way to experience God. There is no way to experience God. But I know God because I know in practice how real, how dynamic, how powerful is the will of God. He will not compromise with us. I know God is real because I have lived in relationship to him. If you have not, then what we are talking about is pure theory. It's pure theory. I don't talk theory. I talk facts. These are the facts of experience. It is wonderful.
God is real to me because, first of all, I know what it's like when I try to do my own will and I find myself directly in conflict with him. You can't be in conflict with somebody who doesn't exist. Try that sometime. It is nonsense. But, on the positive side, when I do his will, I experience his presence and his fellowship. And I believe it — even to the point that I said, I heard him speaking to me. I mentioned only that experience. Many other experiences later on. But that was my first experience. God manifests himself to us, as it says in John chapter 14. The Lord Jesus says, "If you obey my commands, if you do my will, I will reveal myself to you."
There are so many Christians to whom God is not real. And I know the reason why. Because your will is the center of your life. God's will is not the center of your life. That's why God does not reveal himself to you. And then God becomes further and further away from you, and in the end you say, "Where is God?" He is nowhere near the person who wants to do his own will. This is a matter of simple practice. You can put these words to the test and find out for yourself whether I speak the truth or not. The Bible is something that can be put to the test. It's empirical. We today live in a world of science, and the key word in science is empirical: to be tested by experience, to be tested by fact. Let me tell you, there is nothing under the sun that can be better tested by fact than the Word of God.
I don't preach in every message and leave you wondering, "Well, how do I know whether this is true?" I say: you commit yourself to live by the will of God. Absolutely. Just do it. If God is not real after one year, you can come and spit in my face. I say you are a liar of the first order. I yielded my life to live by the will of God and I have experienced nothing. God is not real. Do me the favor and spit in my face in one year's time. Do me the favor. I have time and again challenged people. And those of you who are from Montreal will know I have done this time and again. I challenge people to live according to the Word of God, and they won't do it. Many of them will not. Why? The cost is too high. The difficulties are too great. Well, you just keep on going with your theories, and on that day in the judgment you can tell God all you got. See how acceptable it is to him.
We can be friends of God. He wants us to be his friends. But let's remember one thing: he is God. He doesn't become friends on our terms. We become friends on his terms. If we want to be friends with the Queen of England or with the King of some country, you become friends with him on his terms, or with her on her terms. We don't say, "I'm going to be friends on my terms." If that were the case, that person is not even worth being friends with. He's obviously nothing. But we are talking about the King of kings, the God of gods. I defy anybody here or anywhere else to live according to what I said. Put God first in your life. Be committed — that's why we use the word "total commitment" — totally committed to live according to his will and his will alone. If you don't experience God as real, you don't. I can't be wrong about it. I would not be preaching the gospel today if I don't believe what I'm saying is true. That's true. I can't find another job? You think I don't have enough qualifications to earn myself more money than I get now? I don't do this work for pay. Let me be very honest with you, especially those of you who are not Christians. I preach the gospel because I know it's true. I preach Christ because I know he is true. And I'm sharing with you this simple secret.
Can I make it any more simple? I can also speak in such a way that nobody understands what I'm talking about. But what's the point of that? Now, some time ago we invited a professor of theology to speak to us on two occasions. Nobody knew what he was talking about. I don't like to preach that way. I don't blame this dear brother, this professor of theology. We invited him so that the church would have a taste, an experience, of what it's like to have a professor of theology preaching. I think it was a very good experience. And he's very humble, he's good. At the end of which they don't know what he's talking about. But I want to speak in such a way that, if possible, even a child can understand me. And nobody said after this meeting, "Well, he was talking about friendship with God, and I don't know how to be a friend with God. I was left in the dark. I don't know what it was all about." Let me repeat myself one more time. It all has to do with the commitment to live absolutely according to his will. In a moment you're going to ask me, "Well, how do I know his will?" I've anticipated that question. We'll come to that in a moment.
Let me go back to Scripture one more time. In John chapter 15. John chapter 15. Because I want to stress what I have said is based entirely on Scripture. I don't come and present you with my own ideas. Even if they were good, they would only be human ideas. John 15. We were looking at this at the summer camp too, but let's look at it from a new angle. John 15, verse 15: "No longer do I call you servants, for the servant" — or slave — as you know, this word translated "servant" is the Greek word for slave, and in the margin of some of your Bibles you will also see that written there — "No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing. But I call you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you." I have made known to you what is the will of God. How do you want to know the will of God? The Lord Jesus said, "I have made it known to you." Where? In his teaching. His teaching. We've got four Gospels here. That's not enough for you to study? His principles of his will are fully laid out.
Now, many of you will know that in our church in Montreal we have various types of training. The training is all designed to teach the principles of the will of God. That's what it is all about: the principles. "All that the Father has shown me I have made known to you." Obviously, to be his friend, to say we want to do his will, we have to know what that will is. And that has to be revealed. I don't know how you read your Bible — if you do read your Bible. But if you read your Bible aright, you will be asking one question: "What is being told me in this passage for me to do? What is the will of God?" If you read it in this way, you will soon be able to see very clearly what the will of God is. There are Christians who have been Christians for years, and they still don't understand the Bible, because they have been looking at it from the wrong angle. They are trying to find out more technical or intellectual knowledge. Well, there is that kind of knowledge in the Bible too, but that is not the primary purpose of the Bible. The primary purpose of the Bible is to reveal God's will to us.
Now, I have read this passage to you just now. For this reason — look again at the words: "No longer do I call you servant" — I call you friends. And then, a little bit further on, verse 20, he says: "Remember the word that I said to you: 'A slave is not greater than his master.'" Do you get the connection? In order to be the friend of Jesus, we must first be his servant. His slave. That is the point of it. "You are my servants and my slaves, but I don't call you that. I don't even treat you as that. I call you friends."
I said last week that the man of God discovers something wonderful in walking with God. That though God is almighty, Creator of heaven and earth, majestic in his power — he could step on us like an ant if he wished — he treats us with the courtesy of a friend. I find that in all these years of my walking with God, God is not a bossy dictator. There are some Christians who are very bossy. There are some pastors who are even more bossy. Some pastors act like some kind of a factory floor foreman: "You go there. You do this. All this and all directions." When you walk with God, God is not like that at all. You find that God treats us with a gentleness and a courtesy of a friend. How do you treat a friend? Well, I don't know how you treat friends, but you ought to treat a friend — friendship is always preserved in mutual love and respect.
Respect is very important. And we shall see in a moment — the problem is, many people don't know how to be friends. They don't know what is the essence of friendship. Many people think that being a friend is to come to a guy and thump him on the back: "Hey, how are you doing?" This kind of thing. "Ah, I see, he's my friend." So what do you treat him like? You thump him. Right on the back. Squeeze him like that. He's half-choking. "Oh, my sweet friend." That's called friendship? This kind of friend — I keep telling him, "Bye bye. Bye bye." I would rather you didn't come near my back.
In the Bible, you will see that friendship is always associated with something called "fear and trembling." Very unfamiliar to our thinking, as I shall show you in a moment. We are unfamiliar with this. We think that friendship has to do with familiarity. That is the foolishness that destroyed so many friendships. Respect is the salt of friendship. It preserves friendship. It preserves a marriage. You know what destroys a lot of marriages? Familiarity. When you are courting one another, it is so nice. You put out your best appearance, your best smile, everything is so nice. And then when you got married — ah, hold out, come here. I am the boss now. I am the husband. Ah, no wonder the marriage will soon be in trouble. Why? Because there is no more gentleness, no more respect for one another.
That is what the Lord Jesus is saying here. First, we are his slaves. But: "I do not call you servants. I call you friends." Always see the close connection between slave and friendship. As I said, friendship with God is based on the absolute doing of his will. What is a slave? I hope you know. In the Bible times, when the Bible was written, slavery was part of the accepted form of society — a very important part of society. Now a slave was somebody committed absolutely to doing the will of his master. He has no will of his own. He is committed absolutely to the master. The Lord Jesus says, "I do not call you slaves." You are indeed my slaves. Then verse 20 he goes back to the word "slave." But I do not treat you as a slave. When he said, "I do not call you slaves," he said, "I do not treat you as a slave." That is the beauty of our relationship: it must start with being totally committed to his will as a slave. If you do not like being a slave of God, you will never be his friend. That is the cost of it. If you like to talk about the cost — I don't see much cost in that. It is so good to be his friend, because he always treats us with that courtesy.
Now, the dynamic of the spiritual life then — the first point that I have been stressing all along — is the absolute commitment to his will. But that does not turn us into robots, because it is the cooperation of our will with his. Although we yield completely to him, we do so voluntarily, not by compulsion. We choose to be a bondslave. In the Bible, the bondslave was somebody who chose to be a slave because he so loved or so admired the person of his master, or the person of the king, or the person of some great teacher, that he chose to be the slave of that person. He regarded it as the utmost privilege to be that person's slave. That is our relationship with Christ.
I can illustrate this from another angle, for those of you particularly who are Christians. It is Philippians 2:12-13. And our time is fast going and we will close in a few moments. Philippians 2:12-13: "Work out your salvation with fear and trembling." I often ask Christians, do you know what that means? For many Christians, they think that once they are saved, they are secure; it doesn't really matter what they do anymore. Paul says, "with fear and trembling." You know what this term "fear and trembling" means? It is the language of the slave in relation to his master. Paul is saying: work out your salvation in relationship to God as a slave who stands in relation to his master.
You can see that in Ephesians chapter 6, for example. In Ephesians 6, it describes the relationship of a slave to his master exactly in these words. Ephesians 6:5, for example: "Slaves, be obedient to those who are your earthly masters, with fear and trembling, in singleness of heart, as to Christ." Here again, the fear and trembling is not in relation to the earthly master, but as in relation to Christ. It is the attitude of a slave. You know that the slave in those days was in the absolute power of his master, so that a master could put a slave even to death if he so chose. He was the property of the master. To work out your salvation with fear and trembling means: work out your salvation in such a way that you are totally committed to the will of God as a slave to his master.
And then: "For God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure."
One more point to bring us to a close. I said, in answer to the question, how do we know the will of God in order to totally commit to doing his will, I said the Lord Jesus has already revealed it to us in his word, in his teaching. But there is another way. And that is the direct revelation that comes to us through the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit of God comes into our life and reveals. That's the second part. Philippians 2:13: "For he is at work in you to will" — to motivate and to reveal God's will to us. So God's will is revealed to us in two ways: one is through his revealed Word, the Word of God; and the second way is through the Holy Spirit.
Now again I want to say, especially to those of you from various religious backgrounds, that the second without the first is absolutely deadly. Because you will not even be able to tell whether it's the Spirit of God working in you or not. That is why the desire in many cases to speak in tongues can be dangerous. Because it is not only Christians who can speak in tongues. I should advise you: there are other spiritists who can also speak in tongues. Speaking in tongues is an external phenomenon that can be duplicated by other spiritists if they so choose. How can you be sure that it is the Spirit of God working in you? Only one way: by being absolutely committed, totally committed, to doing the will of God alone.
Now many churches often don't emphasize this point enough: the total commitment to doing his will. Without total commitment, let's not talk about spirituality, because people get into the wrong kind of spirituality. But when you are totally committed to live under God's will, the Spirit of God will be active in you and be able to speak to you and reveal things most marvelous to you. And he can reveal these things to you often without a single word being spoken — in one flash of revelation, you see it all.
Now this is a regular experience for me. I know God, not because I've studied a lot in the Bible alone, but because I walk with him. And I walk with him not because I'm better than anybody else. I think — there are so many people, as I say again and again, who are better than I am. But one thing I do. One thing I have. No matter what my inadequacies may be — I think many of you are far better people than I am. More polite. More thoughtful. More considerate. More kind. More merciful. More gentle. In many ways better than I am. And I don't say this as a matter of politeness. I know it's true, that many people are far better than I am. But there is one thing I do that most people don't seem to do, and that is: I am totally committed to doing God's will. And I have been for all these years — more than 20 years. And as a result of that, God reveals things to me and talks to me about things from day to day as an almost regular experience. Sometimes I like to talk about it. Sometimes I prefer not to talk about it, because sometimes I am afraid that people will just pursue the experience for its own sake. That would be bad. I said right at the beginning: you must pursue God, not the experience.
But I am talking about how God reveals his will to us. And there are two ways. One is the external Word, which gives us general principles for everyday life. But it does not tell us what to do in a specific situation sometimes. And for the specific situation we need specific revelation.
Let me give you one example recently that happened in Montreal. As you know, we had people in full-time training in Montreal. And the father of one of them suffered a heart attack. And the family called from Hong Kong to this brother and said, "Your father has had a heart attack. The doctor says he is dying. He may die within the next day or two. He is unconscious. He is critical. He is in a coma. Come back quickly." The case was so urgent that I was awakened and told that this thing had happened, and what should he do.
When I went to the phone and picked up the phone, this brother was there telling me, "I just had a call from Hong Kong. My father suffered a heart attack. He is dying. The doctor says that there is little or no hope for him. It is a 90% chance that he would go within a day or two." So he said, "Should I go back to Hong Kong straight away?" As I always do, I looked up to the Lord in that split second, and the Lord revealed to me at once: his father would not die. No matter what the doctor said, he would not die. So I told him instantly on the phone, I said to him, "You don't have to be afraid. Your father will not die." He said, "But the doctor said so. I mean, they are the ones who are the experts. They examined him. They saw his condition." I said, "He will not die." I said the Word of God can be tested. If I was wrong, I would immediately have opened myself to proving that I was wrong. I stuck my neck out, no? I wasn't sticking my neck out. I was simply telling him what the Lord told me: he would not die.
This happened only — some of you were in Montreal at that time. So he said, "Well, should I go back?" I said, "It's not necessary for you to go back to Hong Kong. Your father will be fine. But I leave the decision to you. If you want to go back, you go back. I think you'll just waste the journey, but if you want to go back, it's up to you. You are free." And he said, "What shall I do?" I said, "Well, you wait before God. You decide. I want to tell you one thing you should do. You better claim his life. Pray for your father. Claim his life, otherwise he will die sometime in the future. But you claim his life." Because his father had not yet become a Christian. And I said, "Ask the Lord to keep him alive until you go back to Hong Kong in a few months' time. So you tell the Lord — ask the Lord, 'Please keep my father alive until I get home so that I can witness to him.'" So will you do that? I said, "How much time you ask from the Lord is up to you. Not me. Only: how much time do you dare to ask from the Lord?" He was going back in August. This was — I don't know if you remember — April or May, I think somewhere around there. So he said he would ask the Lord, and later he said he had indeed asked the Lord. I said, "How much time did you ask from the Lord?" "Till August." I said, "Why didn't you ask for more?" Because he was hoping to get back in July. Well, the phone calls went back and forth from Hong Kong and so on, and then the medical reports started to change. "Your father's condition is improving. It's improving. It's still improving." And then finally he was out of hospital altogether.
He said, "How do you know that he won't die?" The answer is: I don't know. God knows. And the Lord revealed it to me that he wouldn't die. And the medical opinion was that there was more than a 90% chance he would die, or at least if he lived he'd be left crippled. He came out of hospital. He's still alive. I just came from Hong Kong. His father is still alive. He has yet to profess faith in the Lord. In the beginning of October, he'd better use his time fast. He has used his time fast.
You say God is not real? I dare you, try it sometime, when a doctor says the man will die, I dare you to say — when somebody else's life is at stake — "He will not die." This is not a matter of hit or miss. This is a matter of the reality of the living God. And you say, "How do you know God is real?" I'll give you another example.
Take for example, very near to that time, the father of a sister, another girl in the church, was dying — this time of diabetes. Now diabetes generally is a slow death. You don't die like a heart attack, just like that. It goes over a period of time. The indication was his condition was quite serious. And she asked me, "Should I go back to Malaysia?" I think many of you met our sister; many of you when she passed through here on the way from Malaysia. I said to her, "Go, and go fast. Now, as fast as you can. Get on the plane and go." You see, the Lord's instruction was this time exactly the opposite. This time the word was: go fast. Why so urgent? Diabetes is a slow death, and there were other ways to keep him alive by dialysis and so forth. I said to her, "Go fast. Don't waste time." She grabbed the next plane. They nearly missed the plane in Buffalo, I think — some of you will know the story. They drove down to Buffalo, they caught the plane, nearly missed the plane. And then she got to Los Angeles, and she came back in. And most of you who met her know the rest of the story. She got to KL. Her father died — was it three or four days later, I don't recall. So she had three or four days to witness to her father, and then her father died so suddenly that she was caught by surprise, because she was out visiting friends at the time when she came back — her father was dead.
You see, the working of God. To walk with the living God. In one case I told him, "No need to rush back. The medical opinion was urgent: he must come back quickly, the father is dying." I said, "He will not die." And he didn't, because God said so. In the other case, I said to her, "Go fast. Your father is dying. He will not last long. You'd best go immediately." She left immediately. And if she had dallied even another day or two, she would have had no more time to talk to her father. She rushed back just in time to have one or two or three days to talk to her father.
You say God is not real? I hope I preach the Word of God because I know he is real. I am not talking about facts long ago. I am talking about things that happened a couple of months ago. These are truths of which there are many witnesses to testify whether these things are true or not. We don't have to tell stories to defend the faith. It is either true or it is false. I always say to people: if God is not real, then just quit the church. Forget about Christianity. Enjoy your life while you still have some life to live. You will die, get buried, and forget it. But if God is real, then don't mess around and compromise — hanging a bit here and a bit there. Halfhearted Christianity is no use to anyone. Be totally committed to his will. But only on that condition — let me say to you very honestly — only on that condition will you experience God to be real. And then you will have the privilege to be a slave — no, he will not treat you as a slave. He will treat you as his friend, in a rare and precious friendship.
Let us pray.